by Jane Toombs
Handing her a partially peeled banana, Linnea wondered what else to feed her. She’d have to ask Talal what Yasmin was accustomed to having for breakfast. Stupid, but in all her fantasies of recovering her daughter it hadn’t occurred to her that there’d be this language barrier.
Her old Arabic phrase books would help, but even better, she’d get Talal to write down the English words she’d be using in everyday interaction with Yasmin and their Arabic equivalents. That way they could communicate and at the same time she could teach her new daughter English.
How long did he plan to stay?
“Ya, Mama,” Yasmin said. Her next words were not only in Arabic but almost unintelligible because her mouth was full of banana.
“Talal,” Linnea said to her. “We’ll ask Talal.”
He spoke from the entrance to the kitchen, “Maddamti , I am at your service.”
She turned to him. “I don’t know what to feed Yasmin or what she’s trying to tell me. She really shouldn’t talk with her mouth full—she might choke.”
“It’s also impolite. Like everyone else, Yasmin must learn her manners.” He rattled off a string of Arabic and Yasmin lowered her head, looking up at him from under her lashes.
“Already a coquette,” he said, then spoke more Arabic to Yasmin.
She brightened, swallowed and began chattering, evidently telling him what she wanted to eat because he turned to Linnea and said, “Chocolate milk, bread and jam. ”
“How about you?” Linnea asked.
“I smell coffee brewing. I hope it’s leaded, as my brother would say.”
“I’m trying to switch to decaf, but caffeine in the morning’s hard to give up,” she said, pouring him a mugful of coffee. “By the way, why does Yasmin call me ‘Ya, Mama’? What’s it mean?” .
“In Kholi, when you’re speaking to someone, it’s considered polite to preface their name with ya. The closest English equivalent would be oh. When I awoke this morning and saw you in bed with me I might well have said, ‘Oh, Mama!”’ The inflection he gave the two words was very different from the way Yasmin said them. “Or, perhaps, Allah kareem because I felt God was generous. But I had a feeling you might not be.”
She wished she’d poured the coffee in his lap. Choosing not to reply, she busied herself fixing Yasmin’s breakfast.
“Would you be generous enough to allow me to make the coffee after this?” he asked. “Presuming I haven’t already outstayed my welcome.”
Now he was telling her he didn’t like the way she made coffee. Evidently he’d preferred last night’s dregs of the pot. But, as annoying as she found him, she was relieved to know he didn’t plan to desert her immediately. Only because she needed to pick his brain for the right words to say to Yasmin, of course.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I agree. After we eat. I’ m not reasonable before breakfast.”
Nor necessarily after, either, she was tempted to say but held her tongue.
Later in the living room, she sat on the couch with Yasmin while he prowled about the room, stopping to examine her Galen sketches again.
Yasmin watched him for a few moments, then slid off the couch, ran into the master bedroom and returned, hauling the little case. She dumped its contents on the living room floor. Plastic blocks, rings, squares and triangles tumbled out. Nodding in satisfaction, Yasmin plopped down beside the toys and began fitting them together.
Talal strolled over to the couch and sat down on the opposite end from Linnea. Still too close as far as she was concerned. Her former husband had insisted on wearing a cloying cologne as, she’d noticed in Kholi, many Arab men did. Talal did not. Why, then, was she so conscious of the faint scent of what must be his aftershave ? Because it mixed with his own intriguing male smell, one she responded to against her wish?
Defensively, she began talking, telling him about the list of words she needed from him.
“I’d planned to do something of the sort,” he said, somewhat impatiently, she thought. “We have another, not so easily solved problem ahead of us.” He gestured toward Yasmin, absorbed in her play. “Your daughter.”
Linnea sat straighter. “Why is she a problem?”
“When the media show up, and they will sooner or later whether I notify them or not, what do you intend to tell the reporters? That she’s not your kidnapped daughter?”
“Media!”
“Didn’t it occur to you that a long-lost daughter returned to her American mother by a Kholi king is a newsworthy event?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so,” she said slowly, “but—”
“What will you tell them?” he repeated.
“I—I hadn’t considered the possibility of reporters.”
“Do so.”
She stared at him. “I suppose you expect me to lie.”
“I don’t know what to expect from you. What I’m sure of is if you insist she’s not the child your husband abducted from America, you risk losing her.”
“No!”
Yasmin looked up from her blocks. Talal spoke soothingly to her and she resumed playing.
Doing her best to keep her voice even so as not to upset Yasmin again, Linnea said, “I’ve already told you I won’t give her up.”
“You’ll have to if the king insists she be returned to Kholi, and chances are he will. That American birth certificate is for the child your husband kidnapped. Once you announce she’s not that child, you label her as Kholi-born.”
Linnea clutched her hands together. She hadn’t gotten that far in her thinking. In fact, beyond knowing she’d never give up Yasmin, she hadn’t planned ahead at all. “You said she’s an orphan. If she has no relatives in Kholi, why wouldn’t the king let me raise her?”
“I’ve told you. If she’s not your abducted daughter, she’s Kholi, not American. The king wouldn’t permit an American woman to raise a Kholi child who was not her own.”
“How cruel!”
He shrugged. “We’re protective of our own.”
“Protective is not the word I’d choose. You Kholis are all as selfish and mean-spirited as Malik.” Despite herself, her voice rose. Yasmin sprang up from the floor and laid her head on Linnea’s lap.
Linnea stroked her soft hair, murmuring, “It’s all right, sweetheart Everything’s all right.” Apparently reassured by the tone of her voice, Yasmin raised her head and glanced at Talal, who smiled at her and gestured at the toys she’d been playing with.
When Yasmin was seated again on the floor, Linnea said, “I can’t give her up. I won’t. But you’re telling me I must lie to keep her.”
He glared at her. “I’m doing no such thing. You’re the one who insists she’s a changeling, not me.”
“You believe I’m wrong, then.”
“Everything I know and see points to the fact that I’ve brought you the right child.”
Linnea turned an anguished gaze on him. “You’re putting me in a no-win position. If I don’t lie, I’ll lose her. If I lie, I’ll lose any chance of ever recovering my birth daughter. You can’t be so cruel as to sic the media on us.”
He reached over and touched her hand momentarily. “I don’t intend to, not under these circumstances. But that doesn’t mean some enterprising reporter won’t smoke you out. If I’m still here, the problem will be compounded.”
“Because you’ll be saying one thing and I’ll be saying another.” Linnea covered her face with her hands. “What am I to do? If I tell the truth I may have to fight the king in the courts and drag Yasmin through miserable publicity.”
“With a good chance of losing.” Sliding closer, he took her hands from her face and held them in his. “I don’t want any of this to happen to you, Linnea. Or to her.”
Looking into his dark eyes she recognized genuine concern. “Do you understand that my great-uncle would not knowingly send you a changeling?” he asked. “If she is one, then someone has deliberately lied to the king of Kholi, someone who’s aware the penalty for
that is certain death.”
She took a deep breath and pulled her hands free. “I don’t doubt what you say is true. But it doesn’t change my truth. God knows, I loved her from the moment I held her in my arms yesterday. But she’s not—” Her voice broke.
This time Yasmin climbed into her lap and put her arms around Linnea’s neck, hugging her.
Talal gazed at the two of them, mother and daughter, and cursed Linnea’s stubbornness. If ever he saw a matched pair, these two were it. He felt responsible not only for the child but for Linnea as well. He had to protect them both from the media, at least until Linnea came to realize she was wrong. If ever she did.
A temporary solution sprang to mind. The problem wasn’t going to go away but he could buy them time. “How would you and Yasmin like to take a trip?” he asked.
Linnea turned to look at him. “A trip?”
“To Nevada. I’m going there. You two fly with me.”
Her brow furrowed. “To Nevada?”
“Yes. As soon as possible. If you’re not here, how will anyone know where you’ve gone? Or whether the child ever got here?”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t stop to think. There isn’t time, and thinking hasn’t helped and won’t help. Pack.”
“But—Nevada?”
“My brother, Zeid, has a ranch in the Carson Valley. We’ll stay with him.”
“Zeid,” Yasmin said, unwinding her arms from Linnea’s neck to look at him.
“Zeid and Karen and Danny,” he told the child.
“Karen. Danny,” she repeated. He smiled at her, proud of the way she remembered what he’d told her. A bright little girl as well as pretty. A daughter anyone would love.
Danny? Wasn’t that his son’s name? Linnea asked herself. And who was Karen? But the questions could wait until she no longer had to worry about a reporter showing up. Meanwhile she needed to share a new worry. “There’s a possibility someone in the complex saw you arrive with Yasmin,” she said.
“With luck the rain prevented that. We’ll split up to leave and hope no one makes the connection. Or finds out where we’re going.”
“I don’t like the idea of running away, but I guess there’s nothing else to do,” she said doubtfully.
“Then pack. What’s the closest major airport near here? Newark?”
She shook her head. “Stewart, in Newburgh. About thirty miles from here. My grandmother—” She broke off. Now was not the time to talk about her family. But she was momentarily distracted by the memory of bringing her baby up from the city so her grandmother in Newburgh could see her. Grandma had died six months later and baby Yasmin...
Caught up in the past, she was aware of Talal phoning but didn’t listen.
“No available flights until tomorrow morning,” he told her as he hung up. “We’ll check into a motel near the airport until then.”
Linnea took a deep breath and brought herself back to the present. Fixing her gaze on Talal, she said, “About the motel—I certainly don’t intend to share a room with you.”
He chuckled. “Not even after last night?”
“I wasn‘t—we didn’t—” she sputtered.
“We’ll get adjoining rooms, ostensibly for the child, since we’ll be registering as man and wife. Under false names, so we won’t leave a trail. Are there rental units nearby where we can store both our cars? I don’t want either of them left here or parked at the airport.”
“You mean like those storage spaces? I guess some of them are big enough to park a car in—I never thought about it before. We do have several around the area.”
He nodded, lifted Yasmin off her lap onto his and began murmuring to her. When he finished in Arabic, he said to her in English, “We go.”
She looked up at him. “Yasmin go?” When he nodded, she asked, “Talal go? Mama go?” Again he nodded and then set her on her feet. Apparently satisfied, she began picking up her playthings and putting them back into the little case.
“Yasmin’s getting ready,” he said to Linnea. “How about you?”
A thousand and one details flashed into her mind. Send the Galen drawings off. Have the mail held. Cancel the newspaper. What clothes to pack. As far as she was concerned, Nevada was almost a foreign country. She knew about Las Vegas and Reno, though she’d never been to either, but Carson Valley?
Talal rose from the couch. “I’ll call about the storage units while you pack.”
Linnea asked him to call to have the newspaper held as well. Then, feeling she’d been rushed into a decision she wasn’t ready to make, she walked slowly into her bedroom, trailed by Yasmin.
“Ya, Mama go?” Yasmin asked her.
Linnea dropped to her knees and hugged the little girl, murmuring, “We go together. Always together.”
She packed in a daze, uncertain she was doing the right thing but not finding any viable alternative. Above all, Yasmin must be protected.
When finally Talal announced they were ready, the unreality of what she was about to do kept Linnea off balance. Yasmin was going with Talal, and she looked uncertainly back at Linnea as he urged the girl through the kitchen door and across the patio in a roundabout way to the parking lot. Linnea watched them, Talal burdened with her suitcase as well as the three bags he’d brought with him. Yes, he did favor his left leg a trifle.
After waiting the fifteen minutes that Talal had specified, feeling more and more like a character in some spy drama, Linnea picked up her package of drawings. At the last minute something occurred to her and she hurried into the bedroom, where, standing on tiptoe, she pulled a plastic bag from the shelf and brought it with her. As she was leaving by way of the front door, her phone rang. She hesitated, then decided to let the answering machine take care of the call, just in case.
She met no one on her way to her car and made an uneventful trip to the post office, where she sent off the Galen package and had her mail held. Unsure how long she’d be gone, she told them a month.
At the storage unit, she arranged for the rental, drove her car into the metal cubbyhole, closed the door and padlocked it. She’d seen Talal and Yasmin parked along the road in a red sports car on her way in and hurried through the open gate to join them. Yasmin, buckled into the cramped back seat, greeted her with a big smile.
“I’m not accustomed to skulking,” she told Talal.
“We’re not skulking. We’re a happy, three-unit nuclear family on our way to Nevada.”
She slanted a frown his way. “Happy?”
He shrugged. “How about content?”
“Mama,” Yasmin said from in back. “Talal.” Linnea had to admit the little girl sounded content with them both in her sight again. “Go Ne-va-da,” Yasmin added.
“That’s another thing,” Linnea said. “My conception of Nevada is of glitter and gambling in Las Vegas and Reno, or else desert and mountains.”
“It’s beautiful country as you will see. There’s also Lake Tahoe, where my sister Jaida lives. Part of the lake is in Nevada.”
This Kholi prince had a sister in Nevada as well as a brother? “So your brother and sister live in Nevada,” she said. “Permanently?”
“Yes. They’re Americans.”
“How about your parents?”
“Dead.” His tone warned her not to probe further.
“Mine are, too,” she told him, and dropped the subject even though her curiosity was far from satisfied. Talal’s command of English was excellent, far better than Malik’s had been, but his slight accent was definitely Kholi.
She decided to risk one more comment. “You gave me the impression that you lived in Kholi.”
He nodded curtly.
“Ice cream,” Yasmin said clearly.
“I knew I’d regret teaching her that word,” Talal muttered. “Badayn,” he told Yasmin. “Later”
Linnea delved into the plastic bag she carried and noticing Yasmin’s restlessness, unwrapped a bright pink stuffed kitten. Turning toward the girl, she of
fered her the toy, saying, “Kitty.”
Yasmin took it from her, examining the cat gravely. “Aziz,” she murmured finally, and hugged the toy to her.
“Does that mean cat?” Linnea asked Talal.
He shook his head. “The word means many things, like dear or cherish. It’s also a name. I think she’s decided to name her new friend Aziz.” He said a few words to Yasmin, who replied in Arabic.
“Besides thank you, she’s saying she loves the cat—and you,” he said.
Touched, Linnea smiled at the child. The toy, bought almost three years ago for the other Yasmin, had been stored on the shelf, awaiting her daughter’s return. Her heart was soothed to see how much it meant to her gift daughter. “I love you, too, Yasmin,” she whispered under her breath. Or so she thought.
Talal glanced at her and spoke again to the child, who smiled shyly at Linnea. “I translated your words,” he said.
They rode in silence until they came to a five-corner intersection with traffic lights, where a direction sign showed the distance to the airport
“Five miles,” he said. “Close enough.”
He chose a motel where each room was entered from the outside rather than from inside a lobby. Linnea remained in the car with Yasmin. “Ya, Mama,” the girl said, “ice cream.”
Recalling the word Talal had used, Linnea said, “Badayn . Later.”
“La-ter,” Yasmin repeated.
The adjoining rooms were clean and attractive enough in a generic motel mode. They settled in, Linnea and Yasmin in one room, Talal in the other. The open door between the two reassured Yasmin, resigning Linnea to the idea it would have to remain open.
“Yasmin has asked for ice cream,” Linnea called to Talal. “Maybe we should go and find some for her.”
“The less exposure of the three of us together, the better,” Talal said, coming through the connecting doorway. “I’ll go out and bring back some ice cream.”
He returned in no time with a quart of chocolate, plastic spoons and plastic bowls. Yasmin started to eat hers with enthusiasm but had taken no more than a few spoonfuls when she pushed the bowl away, her face paling. Moments later she vomited onto the table and the floor and herself.